Business entities often negotiate agreements with one or more network service providers to provide network access to multiple networks. For example, an electronic commerce business may negotiate a contract agreement with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to provide high-speed access to the Internet enabling, potential customers to access its content, or to provide access to a banking entity to pay bills or to collect account receivables from customers. Typically, there is a one-to-one negotiation between the business entity and the ISP providing the service.
At times, large business entities negotiate individually with multiple ISPs to provide network services because, for example, a single network service provider is unable to handle the network traffic bandwidth of the large entity. Therefore, the business entity has a network connection or channel directly from its internal network to each individually negotiated network service provider. In this way, each network service provider manages, monitors, and bills the business entity based only on the network traffic transmitted over the network connection dedicated to the contracted business entity.
However, the cost of a business entity to connect its internal network with one or more network service providers may be quite significant depending on factors, such as, the cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining additional network hardware, software, and/or transmission media (e.g., fiber optic lines, T-1 lines, etc.) between the business entity and each contracted ISP. Maintaining the new network elements is especially cumbersome if each ISP has different network protocols and standards to contend with.
In addition, every so often an ISP may determine it does not have the bandwidth to handle the current network traffic and negotiates an agreement with a second ISP to handle for example, the delivery of a portion of the network traffic to its intended destination. The negotiated use of a second ISP to deliver network traffic is typically unknown to the primary business entity because the business entity continues to only send its network traffic to the first ISP. Additionally, the second ISP does not bill the business entity directly because the agreement is between the first ISP and the second ISP. However, the additional cost might be passed along to the business entity by way a higher billing rate. This way, the business entity is charged a higher billing rate than the business entity would have otherwise been charged, if the business entity would have negotiated the billing rate with both ISPs individually.